Pol Pot

Pol Pot (19 May 1925-15 April 1998), born Saloth Sar, was the leader of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia from February 1963 to 1981, succeeding Tou Samouth. His communist Khmer Rouge seized power after the Cambodian Civil War came to an end in 1975, and he led a violent transition to communism through the "Cambodian Genocide", where he killed the intelligentsia and political dissidents of the country. As a result of his foul ways, he alienated Vietnam, which had a series of border disputes that led to the Vietnamese-Cambodian War, in turn leading to the Sino-Vietnamese War. In 1979, the Vietnamese overthrew Pol Pot as leader of Democratic Kampuchea, and he led a rebel faction of the Khmer Rouge until 1997 in Thailand near the Cambodian border. He died under house arrest in 1998.

Biography
Saloth Sar was born on 19 May 1925 in Prek Sbauv, Kampong Thom, French Indochina, the eighth out of nine children from a fishing family; he later changed his name to Pol Pot. He was educated in France and worked as a railroad builder in Yugoslavia before joining the French Communist Party and advocating the independence of Indochina. In 1953, he returned to Cambodia, and in 1964 he convinced North Vietnam to help Cambodian communists (known as the "Khmer Rouge") in overthrowing the Kingdom of Cambodia and creating a communist state. The Cambodian Civil War broke out between the United States and South Vietnam-backed kingdom and the North Vietnam and Viet Cong-backed Khmer Rouge, and in 1975 Pol Pot would seize power in Phnom Penh as both the Cambodian war and Vietnam War came to a close. Pol Pot assumed office as President of Democratic Kampuchea, the country that the Khmer Rouge formed, and he was the de facto leader of the country. He combined Buddhism with communism and ruled an authoritarian state, and he purged millions of his enemies in "the killing fields" in the Cambodian Genocide. Border issues with Vietnam led to a war with them, and in 1979 Vietnam invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge, angering Cambodia's ally of China and leading to another war. Pol Pot led Khmer Rouge guerrillas from Thailand to strike into Cambodia until 1997, when he was captured by government forces after a futile US-backed guerrilla struggle. He died under house arrest in 1998, possibly killing himself with poison or being poisoned by another person.